It is rare for me to enjoy the entirety of any journal’s single volume. I love many journals, their collections as a whole, their shape, their trajectory over time, but I typically feel like most issues, as individual objects, exist with some hole or flaw, a piece that doesn’t quite hit the mark or a formatting error or any other number of missteps that lit journals are prone to. 3RD BED [4] is an exception to this, a great and vast exception.

from Marc Kipniss’s ‘Allegories of Bleeding Feeding’:

He took his needle-nose pliers to the pillow and, wad by wad, removed layers of it. The layers were of dense fiberfill and stained red all the way through. Deep red. Like the sunset he saw out the window. And saw.

If we start on the outside, the cover design for this issue is wonderful – the colors are vibrant and inviting, the feel is perfect, the size and thickness lovely to hold. The interior design too has evolved and taken on a staple 3RD BED aesthetic quality that my eyes enjoy. And this is, all without mention of the content, how much issue four pleasantly struck me. And then, there is the content.

from Michael Burkard’s ‘Five’:

Chris writes White Hour as a complete book. He includes clocks, for me and me alone he also includes a bag. My small panther peers into the same empty valise which received genuine compliments the other night when it was not empty. Chris has not included enough light, so we agree to meet downtown—after a fact, after a lamp.

Burkard’s pieces in this issue are a highpoint, but there are also delightful chapter excerpts from Stacey Levine, more stellar work by Maile Chapman, several great translations, and a series of vignettes from Alia Hanna Habib (like the one below) that are genuinely riveting.

from Alia Hanna Habib’s ‘Gift #1’:

He gave her something she wanted, without her having to ask, and so she carried it with her in her dark bag. Yet she felt (more and more so as time went by) that he did not give it to her because he wanted to give it, but because she wanted so badly to have it, or because he did not know what else to do.

I am not quite halfway through the 3RD BED line, but now, with the way issue four has heightened my expectations, I am super looking forward to reviewing the next issue – and it has a definite new bar to live up to.

Thanks for clarifying Derek. Bummer it is sold out since I loved it so much, but so it goes in this world sometimes. People should get on some other volumes of 3rd Bed though, especially if you are coming this way!